Handheld devices such as personal digital assistants and cellular phones are popular in the consumer electronics market today, combining ease of portability with rich feature sets afforded by ever-increasing hardware and software capabilities. To provide a multi-media experience to users, such handheld devices may deliver audio, video, as well as tactile sensation. Tactile sensation may include vibration, torque, directional impulse, and/or any other force that is perceptible by touch to the user. While techniques for generating tactile sensation are known in the art, such techniques are not necessarily suitable for integration in a handheld device, which specifically calls for low weight and low power consumption. Furthermore, prior art techniques may not offer the capability for fine adjustment of the tactile sensation perceived by the user.
It would be desirable to provide novel power-efficient techniques for generating tactile sensation such as directional impulse in a low-weight and low-power handheld device.